A conventional washing machine, in general, employs an agitating method. That is, a user puts the clothes into a washing basket doubling as a spin-dryer (hereinafter referred to as a "basket") in the first place, then supplies water into the basket up to a given level. After that, the user agitates the agitator (pulsator) disposed in the basket to cleanse and rinse the clothes.
The agitating is performed by repeating the steps of clockwise spinning, halting, counterclockwise spinning of the pulsator, halting. Respective periods of clockwise spinning and counterclockwise spinning are determined at a given duration so that the clothes are sufficiently agitated. The halt period is also determined at a necessary time for starting the reverse spin after the agitating has been halted.
In this conventional structure, the pulsator agitates the clothes, and the pulsator contacts the clothes directly or via water, thereby revolving the clothes to be cleansed. This structure produces a powerful cleansing effect; however, the clothes directly contact the pulsator, so that the clothes become vulnerable to damage.
Further, the clothes frequently move and revolve up and down, and left and right, whereby the clothes get entangled in a complicated manner with each other. When the clothes get entangled, the centrifugal force due to spinning the basket in the next step, i.e. dehydrating; is impressed to the clothes, whereby the entangled clothes are forcibly stretched and pressed onto an inside wall of the basket. As a result, the clothes lose their shape, and are hard to take out from the basket after the dehydrating step.